WWYD about Fire Department not promoting ERF?

ksmommy827 · Oct 10, 2009

I took my son's True Fit to the fire department yesterday because I couldn't seem to get a good install on it in the center. I had to fill out paperwork about my son and when he saw that he is 14 months old and 28 lbs, he said "oh he needs to be forward facing." He told me the seat only rear faced to 22 lbs, so I had to pull out the book and show him that it goes to 35 lbs, then he kept saying "you need to turn him around." And I told him he should go to youtube and type in "extended rear facing" and that it's 500% safer to be rear facing. I am tempted to write to someone at the fire department, so maybe they can educate them on the benefits of ERF, but was just wondering if I'm over-reacting? What would you do?

swtgi1982 · Oct 10, 2009

No you are not overreacting, the fireman must just be un-educated, You should by all means educate him, so that other parents who are not as informed can get best practice information from him and others in the dept in the future. What I did was download a few videos from youtube that I had permission to use and burned them to CD and take them with me now. I took them to my local state police dept after being told the same thing by one of the techs there and they greatly appreciated to "updated info" as they put it. They thanked me greatly.

Also another thing you can do is invite the guy to this site.

Good job on doing what is best for your child!

fyrfightermomma · Oct 10, 2009

It's hard to stay up to date with everything else required of the job. If this person went through the tech class just 4 years ago or something they may not have even really touched much on it. In fact, I went through the class 2 years ago and my instructors just barely skimmed by that. So anyone in that class who doesn't research on their own probably doesn't even really know. If he became a tech back in the day he may not even realize you *can* RF past then. The tech I used to work with went through the class eons ago. He's an awesome tech and knows his stuff, other than the RFing (he expired though 2 years ago when we became techs). To this day he still has no clue you can rear facing longer than a year. Even when we tell him. It's not what he learned so he sticks to what he learned.

I'd just nicely send some info to the fire dept in c/o the tech or stop by with a video or mention it to the fire Chief.

ksmommy827 · Oct 10, 2009

Thanks for the advice ladies! I think I will get permission to put a couple youtube videos on a CD and get it to the local fire departments!

swtgi1982 · Nov 21, 2009

Yea, or local fire department drove me nuts the other day when DD had a class field trip to there. They handed out coloring books to the three year old preschool class about how they can be big kids and buckle themselves into their boosters!

Needless to say after our baby comes I will be pulling together info for them on ERFing and extended harnessing.

Heck my preschooler is still ERFing, boosters are an unknown foreign object to her!

WWYD about Fire Department not promoting ERF?

ksmommy827

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